LONDON, England -- Olympic champion Daley Thompson wants athletes who are caught using banned drugs to be barred for life.

Thompson, who won the decathlon gold in 1980 and 1984, also urged track and field officials to spend more on drug testing.

"I'd take every cheating (athlete) they find, lock them in a cage and throw away the key," Thompson told the Sunday Mirror. "Unfortunately, that can't happen, so we should do the next best thing -- ban them for life. No excuses, no mitigating circumstances. And life should mean life."

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency recently announced that several athletes tested positive this summer for a previously undetectable designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG).

"This time it's up to those running sport to stop paying lip service to the fight against drug cheats," Thompson said. "That means administrators throwing all the resources they have into discovering tests to uncover the new drugs being manufactured."

The International Olympic Committee said it would add tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG, to the list of banned substances included in its tests at the Aug. 13-29 Athens Games. THG already has turned up in the samples of several track and field athletes.

American senators Joseph Biden, D-Del., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, introduced a bill in Congress on Thursday that would make THG and similar substances illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act. Included in the bill would be androstenedione, popularized by Mark McGwire.

The recent spate of positive tests for THG, along with the federal investigation of a Burlingame, Calif. company that supplied supplements to a number of elite athletes -- including Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and American sprinters Kelli White and Marion Jones, have resulted in an international movement to ban and test for the designer performance enhancement drug. The governing bodies of international track and field, skiing, and swimming have already declared their commitment to such a ban, and other sports leagues including the NFL plan to ban and test for the substance as well.